


Close Quarters

by adrenalin211



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 00:39:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adrenalin211/pseuds/adrenalin211
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now all she knows is that she wants to summon the healing hand in her memory for someone who, although a survivor in body (flesh and physicality underneath her hands), hasn't stopped being a victim in his <i>soul</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Close Quarters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leigh57](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leigh57/gifts).



> So I'm only posting this now because in a half an hour it will all be irrelevant with the new episode. This is a Daryl/Carol story, through and through, so you know. If you don't like them, then probably you won't like this.

They all crowd into the meeting space.

Well, what _remains_ of the council crowds into the meeting space.

Carol cringes at the way she phrases that thought in her head, the way she's grown to accept the encroaching deaths of people who have become important to her. 

She watches on as Hershel taps the wooden stick against the table, demanding the floor at the emergency gathering. The group looks to him as he speaks. 

"Patrick turned with little warning," he says, and Carol knows the next sentence out of his mouth because she'd talked to him about this before the meeting was called. His eyes looked that serious because of the concern he was preparing to raise in the panicked aftermath of this morning's events. 

"We can yammer on hypothesizing about this virus and where it came from and how to protect ourselves, but the fact is we just don't have enough information to know anything certain yet. But I have another concern," he says, looking around the table. "One we might be able to do something about." Hershel looks down at his intertwined fingers, one thumb worrying the other. "How are we going to protect ourselves at night? When our guard is down?"

"We're in a prison," Sasha says plainly. "We don't just sleep in cells anymore. We lock ourselves up in them. If someone turns because of this virus? Well, then they can't get at anyone else." 

"There aren't enough cells for everyone to have one," Rick says, not so helpfully.

Carol chimes in. "Two per cell. We'll fill blocks A and B that way. Family stays together, to the extent that's possible," she says. "That way if..." 

She feels Daryl's hand gently tap her knee under the table and she thinks, _Well that's new_.

She can't bring herself to finish that sentence, but everyone nods. 

Everyone knows what comes after "If."

"Each person stays armed at all times," Rick commands, looking over at Carol like he knows something. "Kids, too," he adds, and because he probably can't admit he'd been wrong, he offers, "Thanks to Carol, they already know a thing or two," and that's enough for her.

She sees Maggie across the room giving her an acknowledging nod. Glenn's affixing a bandage to the gaping cut on her arm.

"We have four on guard by the cells at night, four more outside the prison keeping watch," Hershel suggests. The reasoning behind the added protection doesn't need to be spoken out loud. 

Anyone can turn now. 

"I'll draw up a night rotation," Glenn offers. 

After the meeting's wrapped up, Daryl follows her through the door and moves closer to her side. "Where do you want to set up for the night?" he asks, shrugging his shoulders back as though his posture needs to be adjusted. 

And maybe that's another thing that could go unspoken. Maybe the fact that they're each other's family here is obvious to everyone else, but up until now Daryl never really let on (at least verbally) that it's obvious to _him_.

She'd adopted a kind of teasing flirtation recently, which continues to feel risk free because of the way she sometimes catches him looking at her at little longer than just friendly. It gives her ammunition. So although he can't verbalize it, she knows every last drop of what she feels is mutual, and she's relished the amusement of pushing him just barely up against the edge of uncomfortable before moving back to safer ground, and how she can make him laugh in the process. 

She blinks a couple of times as she processes his questions, the _words_ of it, and again she's left thinking, _Well that's new_. "The last cell in Block B," she answers casually, then catches his eye before adding, "No one will patrol back that far tonight."

Daryl's caught off guard, but he smiles through a laugh of what she figures to be faux admonishment. Carol can't help but feel the victory of having accomplished it _again_. "Right," he says. 

++++++++++++++++++++ 

He lets her lead the way to the cell they'll share tonight. She can walk in front of him 'cause he's not really sure he wants her to see his face right now. Fact of the matter is that he'd never been good at poker, not that he's sure what he's hiding in his hand.

After their losses today, he can't help but want to grab on and hold what's still here, and he can't let on that, you know... That he's pondered what it would feel like to touch her all goddamn afternoon, since the fucking events of this morning, he just wants....

He doesn't know. 

It's just that he doesn't want her to figure him out before he does, and that's probably all stupid 'cause she's gonna anyway. Carol's thoughts are always two paces ahead of his and more pinned on the target than the aim he can get with his damn crossbow.

"The top bunk's torn up," Daryl says, laying down the bag that contains all of his belongings. He can see higher up than she can, and he notes the metal springs sticking up through the cheap top mattress. "We'll have to share." 

"Did you do this on purpose?" she asks, nudging his shoulder with her own. 

The only reason he's sure she's joking is because she _has_ to be; he's seeing this cell for the first time just like her, and he lets out a laugh at how damn easily she rattles him, stirs him up and leaves him disoriented. Being with her feels akin to what it might be like to be drunk and sober at the same time, and he doesn't know where that thought came from, and it's probably stupid, but whatever.

"What?" he asks. 

"So we'd have to cuddle," she finishes easily. It occurs to Daryl that he hopes this virus isn't as contagious as that expression of hers, the grin that reaches her eyes. 

He huffs a little. "Grow up," he chides, but he cringes at the words as they leave his mouth. It's like his book of comebacks is trapped in the fifth grade. 

When they were kids, Merle used to tease him for being sweet on Mary-Lynn Miller. (He'd also called him a pansy boy and accused him of being sweet on Charlie Hill, the scrawny dweeb with the suspenders, but that was besides the point.) When he was around Mary-Lynn he'd get even more tongue tied than usual, and it would always end with a walk home from school filled with a self-chastising regret that Merle'd been all too helpful reaffirming. 

It's all irrelevant at the moment, but for whatever reason, probably the reason standing right next to him, Daryl can't get the term "sweet on" out of his head. 

"C'mon," comes Carol's voice, shaking him out of his memory. "Let's set up now and get a head start on dinner." 

++++++++++++++++++++

"Did Beth seem odd to you at supper?" Daryl whispers. It's pitch black in the cell, and she's grateful they had to share a bunk because the fact that his body is pressed right up beside hers is an easy reassurance that he's still there, you know, _living_. 

She thinks for a minute. "Beth has been a little odd lately. Nothing new." 

"True." He chuckles.

"Why?" 

"No reason," he says at first, before pausing. "Well. I told her about Zach last night and she barely flinched."

He's so close that she can smell the soap he uses mixing with a light layer of sweat which, if she's honest, doesn't smell all that bad on him. "People are getting too used to this," she sighs. "Guarding themselves. Preparing for the inevitable. Not letting other people get too close." 

Daryl's body tenses. "Yeah," he whispers and he flips over in the bed onto his side, his back to her. 

Carol takes a deep breath, worrying the words that float through her head will be too much. She lays a hand on his back and begins to rub, gentle at first, and because she can't see his face and read him via expression, the only way she's become accustomed to affirming anything about his thoughts, it feels like the biggest risk she's taken thus far. "Too bad I already have," she admits.

Daryl doesn't say anything, but his body stiffens further, every muscle taught with a kind of nervous energy she wishes she could evaporate. She moves her hands against his back, up and down.

"Does that feel good?"

"Yeah." His voice is rough and crackly as she kneads the muscles below her fingers. 

"Then let me keep going. Relax." 

"I'm tryin'." His tone seems to be one of amused frustration.

"You're not relaxing." 

"I can't." 

"Why not?"

"Why are you always saying stuff like that?" he asks. She can hear the quiver in his voice.

Her hand stills. "What stuff?"

"Nice stuff to me. About me." 

"You don't like it?" She bites her lip, glad he can't see the hurt she's sure she's wearing. 

"Not used to it, I guess," he says and in this moment she wants nothing more than to lift up his shirt and explore the scars that reside on the outermost layer of his skin, the ones she's sure are the reason behind an answer like that. She knows because, well. She just _knows_.

"Why do you think that is?" 

Life for Carol is very much divided into three stages. The Before. The After, which they're in now, obviously. And then a moment somewhere in the midst of everything when she stopped being a victim and started being a survivor. 

In the Before, when she used to go to church on Sundays with Ed and Sophia, stained glass windows and congested, suffocating pews, she'd shut her eyes and imagine some healing hand that could skim over her skin and take away the evil. It'd been stupid, she knew it then, but she'd held onto religion for quite some time in the After, for Sophia, and now, for the life of her, she can't really remember the reason behind any of it. And when she passes abandoned churches on runs she looks up at the steeple and laughs at the simplemindedness of the former world. Now all she knows is that she wants to summon the healing hand in her memory for someone who, although a survivor in body (flesh and physicality underneath her hands), hasn't stopped being a victim in his _soul_. 

Carol resumes her massage, her fingers splaying across the muscled ridges. She resolves to keep touching until he gets used to her hands. Accepts that she wants to make him feel good. "Daryl?" she questions, because he still hasn't answered her.

"Christ, I can't concentrate with your hands on me." 

"You don't like them?"

"I like them too much." 

"I was hoping for that." Carol's heart pulses. She feels a heat, a knowledge stirring. His back radiates electricity.

"What?" His word comes out rough.

She furrows her brow. "You heard me." He turns in the bed and faces her, and she can't see a goddamn thing, but she feels his breath on her neck and that's ... that's...

"Fuck," he says.

She raises her eyebrow, an effort she realizes is futile, so she infuses a teasing tone into her voice as she says, "Well. We'll have to be quiet." 

_"Stop."_ he says, and she feels his pulse hammering where his wrist rests against her hip.

"What?"

"Don't say things you don't mean." His mouth is so close to hers she can almost taste it. She holds back a gasp when his scruff brushes her nose.

"I _do_ mean them," she whispers, closing the remaining distance, finding his mouth with all the senses excepting sight. 

++++++++++++++++++++++

Daryl'd salvaged one of those elbow-grease charging flashlights on a run last week, and he reaches to the side of the bed to find it, winds it up to see what he's doing. 

To see her face, really. He needs to see her face. 

Her fingers work on the buckle of his belt. Probably she can tell by now the kind of impact she has. Not exactly something a man can hide when someone is _this_ close.

Just as well, he decides. It's just as fucking well.

She reaches down to stroke him, and he flinches at the exhilaration of her mere contact. He tries to tell himself not to, to just enjoy it, but he can't help the doubt that arises. Thing is, he knows it's irrational with her. It's just that everyone he's loved has taken it back. Everyone she's loved has taken it back. He needs to be careful.

"Like that?" she asks, but he can't put to words anything that will convey just how dangerously aroused he is, and just how much each touch of her hand sends shockwaves to regions he can't really speak of, even in his mind, because he doesn't deserve to, and he doesn't deserve her hand. 

"Yeah," he grunts, because her fingers are like, right where they've been in all of his dreams.

He glides into her and she gasps. She tells him she isn't going to go anywhere and she says it with a kind of knowing tone that he gets and wants to give back.

So it doesn't matter that this is going to be over way too fast, or that she can't seem to keep her hands in one place. What matters is that he can make out the expression on her face through the dark shadows and hear the sharp inhale of air she takes before her body's contracting around him, squeak of the bedsprings beneath them. It's too much overload for him not to be gone right there with her.

He has to protect her because... this is something that takes trust for her, too. And he's never done this before with anyone as doubtful of worthiness as he, and it just feels good, is all.

It just feels good.


End file.
